No one can type as fast as Twitter, so I’m embedding my Twitter “fiscal cliff” feed below.

The big news this afternoon is that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor apparently is opposing the Senate bill in its current form. Senate Democrats are saying they will not take up any amdended bills sent back by the House.

We’ll see how things develop, and I’ll post an update if there’s anything definitive.

Update 7:35 p.m. — various reports are that there will be a vote in the House on the Senate bill as is sometime tonight as Republicans were not able to get 218 Republican votes for an amendment with spending cuts.

Update 8:15 p.m. —there will be a vote tonight, probably around 9 p.m. 11 p.m. Eastern. I’ll start a new post once the voting starts.

Question: The original Bill (the Bush Tax Cuts) expired Tuesday at 12:01am. The Senate Bill Amending the original Bill was not passed until 3:45am (or there about). So can an expired Bill, that by the Constitution Revenue Bills must be initiated in the House, be Amended by the Senate after expiration and thus bypass the Constitution.

The bill the Senate voted on in the wee hours of this morning was H.R.8 which, in it’s original form, originated in the House:

Latest Title: American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012
Sponsor: Rep Camp, Dave [MI-4] (introduced 7/24/2012) Cosponsors (28)
Related Bills: H.RES.747, H.R.6169, S.3401, S.3413, S.3417
Latest Major Action: 1/1/2013 Passed/agreed to in Senate. Status: Passed Senate, under the order of 1/1/2013, having achieved 60 votes in the affirmative, with an amendment and an amendment to the Title by Yea-Nay Vote. 89 – 8. Record Vote Number: 251.

That version of the bill passed the House on August 1st. Then Harry Reid got his hands on it, amended it early this morning by totally replacing the entire text of the House bill, then passed it this morning. After Reid got done with H.R. 8, only the bill number remained in its original form. Early this morning, Reid introduced and the Senate passed S.AMDT.3448 “In the nature of a substitute”. Not a single Senator on either side of the isle actually read the new text.

Totally replacing the text of a House-passed bill (as Reid also did with Obamacare) makes a travesty of Article I, Section 7 which specifies that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives”.

House needs to stress that any tax bill it passes will be retroactive to 1/1.

Obama is going to play the same cards at each and every upcoming crisis. The House will either rollover or have to say no somewhere down the line. Given that each House member only needs to please the voters in their district, I say they should go Zen: pass the bills they believe in and let the chips fall where they may. It is not as if the current course is sustainable.

If the stories are true and the House repubs tie spending cuts to this so called stop-gap bill from the Senate, then I will at least respect them for having the spine to try and at least move towards a path of some level of fiscal sanity.

the crappy Obot MSM are too stupid to even have a damn clue to know how deep in fiscal doo-doo we are as a nation!

First, laws should be passed through regular order, rather than Soviet-style backroom discussions and near-unanimous approval by rubber-stamp legislatures. The lawmaking gyrations of the last few weeks have been unseemly and an international embarrassment unworthy of Earth’s sole superpower.

Second, the House is not the Senate’s handmaiden. The House of Representatives is under no obligation to swallow whole whatever the Senate tries to cram down its throat. And vice-versa.

I want to see tax cuts out for the Entertainment Industry…if Obama thinks we need tax revenue so badly, let’s start with his buddies who always claim “they should pay more taxes” yet never stroke the check.

Then on to other camps.

I say Let It Burn. Quit hiding the pain…let’s get everyone (well, those of us who actually work) feeling that pain…and then maybe we’ll see some action.

I’m tired of paying for the “Free Lunch” that others are getting. Maybe I should just f’n quit and get my free lunch too.
/rant off

For all those Gun owners who had pinned their last hopes on the Republican majority in the House, this should send shivers down their spine as they rush to their hardware store for new shovels and a GPS unit, pvc pipe and glue. Not only will Congress have bankrupted future generations for as far into the future as I can imagine, but they are going to turn the majority of citizens into criminals.

Granted it was 40 years ago, but I remember being taught in Civics class about Americans who stood up to tyranny and took unpopular stands. We were told that there would always be such men in our free land. Doesn’t really seem that long ago, wonder what happened?.